Obama, GOP clash over 'doc fix'

President Barack Obama on Saturday called on Senate Republicans to clear the way for a vote allowing doctors to continue getting current Medicare reimbursements, saying that if Congress doesn’t act, some seniors could lose their physicians — but Republicans contested his premise, saying that they weren’t blocking a vote at all but trying to ensure the cost of the doctor payments would be paid for, rather than added to the national debt.

Year after year, Congress must act to prevent automatic cuts to Medicare rates to doctors from kicking in, but Obama charged that some Republicans this year are resisting the so-called doc fix — over fears it would balloon the federal deficit. In his radio and Internet address, Obama says that if the GOP doesn’t allow the vote, doctors would see their Medicare reimbursements go down 21 percent next week — and that would force some doctors to dump seniors from their patient rolls.

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“This year, a majority of Congress is willing to prevent a pay cut of 21 percent — a pay cut that would undoubtedly force some doctors to stop seeing Medicare patients altogether. But this time, some Senate Republicans may even block a vote on this issue. After years of voting to defer these cuts, the other party is now willing to walk away from the needs of our doctors and our seniors,” Obama said.

“Now, I realize that simply kicking these cuts down the road another year is not a long-term solution to this problem,” Obama said. “I’m absolutely willing to take the difficult steps necessary to lower the cost of Medicare and put our budget on a more fiscally sustainable path. But I’m not willing to do that by punishing hard-working physicians or the millions of Americans who count on Medicare. That’s just wrong. And that’s why in the short-term, Congress must act to prevent this pay cut to doctors.”

"I’m not sure why he didn’t just call down to the Senate, but the president’s weekly address today doesn’t make sense,” said Don Stewart, spokesman for House Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, who delivered this week’s Republican address. “[T]he Senate is already debating the bill, and … a unanimous consent was reached to continue that debate on Monday.

“Remember, the question isn’t whether to do a doc fix or not; the question is whether to add it to the debt or not,” Stewart said. “As Sen. McConnell says: ‘But even in the face of public outrage, Democrats are showing either that they just don’t get it on this issue of the debt, or that they just don’t care.’”

Republicans have accused Obama and the Democrats of budget sleight-of-hand, saying that if the doc fix had been included in the health care legislation, it would have pushed the total cost of the bill beyond $1 trillion. Now some moderate Republicans would like to see the Medicare fix offset by spending cuts in other parts of the budget.

In the weekly Republican address, taped before the Obama address was broadcast Saturday morning, Boehner accused Obama of having “spent taxpayer dollars with reckless abandon, refusing to make tough choices and pushing the burden on to future generations.”

Saying it’s time to “start reining in Washington’s out-of-control spending spree,” Boehner said the solution should be “[l]ess spending, more jobs — it’s that simple.

Boehner also said “President Obama hasn’t uttered a word in protest of congressional Democrats’ failure to produce a budget,” which he called “a stunning failure of leadership — the kind of leadership President Obama promised to provide.”